The other day I watched an interview of a famous female pop star talking about the release of her latest album. She mentioned how proud she was of the newest installment of the artistic expression of [INSERT NAME] and described her music as “empowering”. Three tracks into the album, the only distinguishing feature between one song and the next was the timing of heavy-drum-beat-set-to-slightly- dissimilar-but-always-salacious lyrics being crooned out by the electronically altered, over-the-top girlish yet obnoxiously-sexualized voice of the 30-year-old star.

“Look who’s binging on the girls-are-sex-objects Kool Aid—once again,” I thought. But then I felt a twinge of guilt at my judgmental, thinly veiled, holier-than-thou attitude towards this woman (because 30 is no longer a girl, let’s be honest). I mean, is it possible, I asked myself, that she actually thinks her music is empowering?

I guess if you grow up in a social matrix that tells you to be equal to a man is to be a man, and that to be a [cool, manly] man is to be sexually active with as many partners as find you appealing, to be callous with your heart, to use people for your personal gain, then sure, her music was super empowering!

This made me think about the importance of premises. The fact that most people, I earnestly believe, are good. In their hearts, most people want to do what is right and what is honorable and what will lead to happiness. But our ideas of what is right, and what is conducive to joy are so distorted that you end up in this mess of a world where women think their worth can mostly be measured in the inches of their waist, and their value lies in the way they can successfully fulfill a man’s lewdest daydreams, and their esteem is firmly ensconced in the fold of their brassiere.

The modern twist, of course, the thing that makes being the object of a man’s desire empowerment, is that at the end of the night you can walk away and choose your next bed buddy. Just like a man, you don’t have to get emotionally attached. The tables are turned. Now women can prey on men. Use them and leave them.

How enlightened, right?

This attitude is based on faulty conceptions of what it means to be good, what it means to be empowered, and ultimately, what it means to be human.

So when my good friend May asked me what I do in my daily life to promote gender equality I realized that one of the only ways I know how to counteract the forces in society that tell us women are this and men are that is through an educational process that helps us to understand our true identity as human beings.

Men and women are different? Maybe. Men and women are the same? Perhaps. I’m not overly concerned with which one is right because I think these are the wrong questions.

What does it mean to be human? What is the purpose of our life on this planet? How do we make the most of the handful of days we’ve been given on this earthly plane to make something of ourselves and of our society?

In answering these questions, issues of femininity and masculinity, superiority and inferiority, are somewhat resolved. At least to my mind, this is the case.

I don’t mean to oversimplify and I apologize if I have done so. I realize that women everywhere are subject to oppression of various forms: be it the traditional deprivation of basic rights like the freedom to receive an education, to vote, to show your face in public, to have a voice; or to the more subtle forms of oppression like the ones described above that basically tell you your worth is intimately tied with your physical appearance and ability to make a man “want you”.

But I also think that the oppression of women is the oppression of men. Men who are raised by mothers who had no access to education; who are forced to play mind games with girls that have been conditioned to think it is only through mischief and manipulation that they can nab a partner; who deprive themselves of the opportunity to acquire the virtues of justice and honor because they’re too busy being sleazy with women; and, ultimately, to have the bar for excellence set at such a pathetically low level that the days of their lives are mostly misspent.

I have been raised to believe that true loss consists in ignorance of our own selves, and that wasting the precious and limited time we have in the pursuit of idle fancies is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies we can impose upon ourselves.

So when I think of promoting the equality of women and men, my mind immediately turns back to these questions of, who are we and why are we here? More importantly, what do we do while we’re here?

I hope to be able to dedicate my life to the development and promotion of curriculum that emphasizes the latent nobility of each human being; the idea that we all have a twofold moral purpose in life—to transform ourselves individually by acquiring virtues whilst simultaneously contributing to the betterment of society and our fellow human beings; by shedding the forces of lethargy that urge us to remain quiet and complacent, instead of nurturing our natural thirst for knowledge and desire to be agents of change; and to develop the perception that would allow us to recognize the positive and negative forces in society so that we can align ourselves with the former and battle the latter.

I’ve had the chance to participate in seminars based around educational content that helps young people question the purpose of their lives and answer important questions about who they are and what they do. During these seminars, I’ve been able to witness the way these young men and women interact, never overstepping the bounds of respect and modesty, yet infinitely tender and loving in their regard of and approach towards one another.

They have offered me a glimpse of what this world can be like when we really learn how to behave in ways that are befitting of our noble stations as human beings.

I’ve never been the most feminine of girls. I have brothers and a sister who taught me how to defend myself. My father often sarcastically remarks how sorry he is that he raised his daughters to be quiet, timid, meek girls. My parents have always treated us kids equally. When I was a little girl and wanted to play with hot wheels and action figures alongside pink dolls, that was just fine. When I was more inclined to go fishing instead of join ballet with the other girls, I was never discouraged.

So when I decided to get a job in construction, I wasn’t expecting to have a hard time. Probably a little naïve – but I’ve always been just fine in boys’ worlds. But what do you do in a boys’ world that doesn’t know you? How do you remain true to yourself? I could feel that I wasn’t being taken seriously. They weren’t believing I could work as hard as they could. I would hear comments like “This is why you don’t send a woman to do a man’s job.” Sometimes jokes, sometimes not. I wasn’t being given the same opportunities as the boys. They were hesitant to give me the heavier work. I began to feel myself toughening up. Clenching up. Putting on a nasty face. Holding myself differently. Pushing the girl in me away. Feeling I needed to be more masculine in order to be accepted. I felt like I was representing all of womankind – but I couldn’t even do it like a woman. I was stuck wanting to be accepted by my coworkers while remaining resentful of them for not accepting me based on my gender.

I was in unchartered territory. Who do you look to for advice when no other women I know have been in my shoes? Women in these roles typically tend to take on the masculine traits, and that’s how they are accepted. I realized that by taking on these male characteristics, I was being just as harmful as my coworkers who were making hurtful comments. Through my actions, I was essentially saying that yes, there is no way a woman can do this job. The only way a woman can do this job is if she becomes like the men. I didn’t want to cop out like that. I wanted to be a woman – without the disguise.

And then I thought about my parents. How they raised me to be my truest self – always. And I remembered that despite the fact that I played with action figures, I still could play with dolls every once in a while. Remind myself that there was no weakness in being a girl. There is no weakness in expressing to my coworkers my feelings. It was time to forget that I was in the boys’ world, but instead it is a world that we don’t define by gender roles. My standard was no longer the boys’ standard but instead it was time to redefine this standard and acknowledge the woman in me – strong and unflinching. Holding myself to the same standard that my parents held me to, and I would want to hold my daughters to – to recognize their given, feminine attributes, and seeing them as strength. Not a weakness.

I still falter sometimes – too eager to prove myself and my strength. But it’s a process. And it is a process that we are going to have to face if we want true equality.

One last thing – I just want to tell all the women out there that if we are going to achieve that equality, it is going to require us to step outside of our comfort zones. Start small. It’s okay for you to carry the groceries, play catch with your kids, or learn how to drill (take it from me, it’s actually quite easy). Just remember that femininity doesn’t need to be defined by masculinity.

When a mother asks herself, “Why Do We Let Girls Dress Like That?” it gives you pause. Schools discuss dress codes, magazines defend their position on women’s fashion, parents talk about the nitty-gritty rules of when to allow your daughter to pierce her ears or wear high heels. But Moses poses a bigger question and ultimately asks, “How did it get to this?” and “What is the role for parents?”

Jennifer Moses posed those questions not on an empowerment blog, or on a women’s self-help site or even in a parenting magazine. She did it in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, and it hit a nerve. A big one. You can read it here, and see that in just over a week it received over 600 comments. Clearly, something is wrong; almost everyone can agree on that.

I had two responses to this. The first, was a memory from one of my favorite aunties. The other a thought about empowering boys.

The best conversation I had about how we dress came from one of my mother’s friends, an “Auntie” without any blood connection. She was the first person to point out to me that being beautiful and being sexy were not the same thing, though the words have become interchangeable.

She and a friend had noticed that in their remote little part of the world, in distant towns and villages, most of the women had been sexually abused. The vast majority, in fact. Some worse than others, some with a greater support system. They started working with groups and looking at what motivated them.

The women created collages from magazine images that motivated them. The healthy ones were predictable: love, family, encouragement, beauty. They were colorful. They showed children playing with parents. They were joyful.

Those who had suffered the most abuse chose images of power, war, survival and . . . seduction. Seduction, they found, was a victim’s response, as if to say, You took power from me. Now, I can make you desire me. I can make you attracted. I can regain, in this one way, power over you. These were the women who had dressed the most sexy, the ones dressing, as Moses wrote in her article, “like prostitutes, if we’re being honest with ourselves.” What was more insteresting, however, was that these women themselves did not think of their dress as beautiful, because they weren’t dressing for themselves. They were dressing for the men.

My auntie and her friend started working on healing circles. One of their biggest activities in the circles was dressing for yourself, with all the color–and cover–that each woman felt was beautiful. It changed their outlook completely.

I’m not suggesting that the girls Moses wrote about are all the victims of sexual abuse, but I am suggesting that there is an inherent power-play built into the way we’ve come to define “beauty,” and how these women in a far off village learned to step away from their own power-plays might be applicable.

My auntie’s story helped me to look in the mirror and ask, “Am I doing this for myself, or because I want attention? Is this beautiful to me?” It was not an angry or punitive approach trying, in vein, to enforce greater rules. It was genuine encouragement.

If we are truly engendering equality, though, then the saddest part of the story isn’t how the girls are dressing but how so very little we expect of the boys and men. It denies the very nobility inherent to both genders: men, in particular, are rarely portrayed in terms beyond their sex drive. Why do girls dress this way? To get attention from boys. Really? Is that all we allow boys to pay attention to? What if there is more to them and what they’d truly want in a female peer? Where did their craving for empathy, for an equal amount of encouragement and attention go?

On one hand, there are a number of books and articles pointing out the double standard: If a man is promiscuous, what do we call him? A “player,” a “pimp”? Those aren’t considered half as bad as what we’d call an equally-promiscuous woman.

But there is another double standard. It’s equally harmful but rarely addressed. It’s the “good girl” vs. the “good boy” definitions. It’s the idea that a woman can be pure and chaste and, no matter how hard it may be, no matter how much peer pressure she may face, she can and will be respected for it at the end of the day. Moses’ article addresses this. But what of the men?

What happens to a boy when he goes off to college and people see that he’s not chasing woman and he is–gasp!–still a virgin? He’s ridiculed. His sexuality comes into question; at first they wonder if he’s gay and still needs to come out of the closet, but after a while, if he’s not chasing men either, then he’s termed “asexual,” as if he was lacking one of those fundamental human characteristics. As readily as we interchanged “sexy” for “beautiful,” we may have also come to confuse “manliness” with “chasing women.”

Perhaps there’s more to developing a man’s character, and more that they can do, want, crave and focus their energies on than what we’ve come to expect of them.

When my mom was little, she invented a game that she would play with her fellow classmates during recess. Skipping around the playground, they would all assume different positions as they played out a vibrant and elaborate character plot – the adventures of a female astronaut. Later, when the women’s liberation movement swept the country, my mom looked on and said, “Well, none of this is new to me!” She’s come from a long line of strong women, but strong in very different ways — there was the resilience of her grandmother, and then inspiring sense of individuality of her mother. My mother brought with her an unflagging, intrinsic belief in gender equality. As a young girl, she appreciated the roles that people play within families, but also understood the foundational respect and power latent within each. My father describes his upcoming as more stereotypical; men did man things, and women knew what they were allowed to do as well. It wasn’t until his mid-twenties that this perspective began to shift — he was knocked sideways by both the illuminating principles of the Baha’i Faith and the undaunted spirit of my mother. Coincidentally, both were introduced to him almost at the same time.

For me, gender equality and a discussion of the critical role of the family unit are inextricably linked. Regardless if it manifests itself in various ways throughout society, in the family this sense of equality it is truly tested. For me, growing up in a family where women outnumber men, I was offered the opportunity to tacitly absorb quite a lot as I watched each sister take charge of her identity, thrusting themselves out into the world. My mother did her best to pass on, in one form or another, those qualities that most define her character — thinking independently, creativity, purposefulness and a strong attitude towards gender equality. We are a large family — a conscious creation of my parents — and with so many children needing to be fed, to be provided for, to be watched over, my mother from an early age assumed the most exquisite of all roles: motherhood. We were fortunate that my father was also a dedicated, loving presence to contribute to our growth and development. However, as we’ve grown, one issue in particular has come to the forefront of our mindsthat of the evolving nature of our family.

Now that none of their children are, well, children, how do we begin to define ourselves? How do we establish new modes of cooperation and communication? How do we continue to expand our family network in ways that are inclusive? And most interestingly, now that the parents are no longer the physical and emotional fulcrums of our lives, how do the children arise to take dedicated ownership of the continued maturation of the family unit. With time and age, we become more aware of our own selves, but we are also able to see our parents for the individuals that they are, with their own spiritual tests and triumphs. The idea of “aspiration’ has arisen at various times in this blog–offering us a chance not to accept a reality that we’ve simply grown accustom to. Of late, our conversations have laid bare each of us; we have come to appreciate frank and open consultation in a new light. Our aspiration for maintaining a strong family identity, regardless of distance and time, has allowed us to express ourselves often in the most vulnerable of ways. Ultimately, sincere expressions of love and care contribute to relationships and give them a sense of movement. We forget that often with our family. It’s easy to neglect and not appreciate the power of sacrifice that my mother has given to ensure that her children are conscious of a sense of purpose. It’s easy to shirk my father’s passing presence, denying him the only thing he’s ever wanted — to know that his children love him. A stereotypical man built on a foundation of dominance has no time for care such as this.

On a more personal level, my sisters have always loved and supported me; literally singing my praises at every chance they get. For the longest time, I simply soaked this in; I didn’t question it, or ask from where they accessed this reservoir of encouragement and compassion. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I realized that I was not reciprocating. “Típica” I thought one day to myself — I often think in Spanish. But I realized that I had not been practicing this same level of support for the female members of my family. This is inexcusable, especially for male siblings. My sisters have never needed “protection”, the usual role relegated to brothers, but they do deserve something else entirely.

Certainly, power is capacity; and as a family grows older, the test is to see to what extent each member can, despite social constructs of gender roles, accompany each other — this implies an application of qualities that are of the spirit.

Welcome

At the core of this blog is the document “Advancing towards the Equality between Women and Men” prepared by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity. However, engendering equality is not just a catchy name, it’s also a process we are all engaged in. In order to give us inspiration to be working towards engendering equality this blog tries to create a space in which actions and reflections are shared by individuals on the promotion of the equality of women and men within their social space.